The Dead Angel
by adangeli
Summary: Jack had a thing about firing his gun. He didn't like to do it. He would, without hesitation. He just didn't like to. Part 4 of the In Washington series. AU


Jack had a thing about firing his gun. He didn't like to do it. He would, without hesitation. He just didn't like to.

Angel had been an informant as long as Jack had been a detective in DC. She'd been a prostitute even longer. Jack had been a beat cop when he'd met her. Younger, then, and eager, he'd charged headlong into a domestic violence call and come up short when he'd found young Angel a beaten and bloody pulp on the floor of a dingy apartment. A neighbor had called when he'd heard her screaming – because a woman didn't live in the apartment. She'd readily admitted to being a hooker as she'd tried not cry out in pain while the paramedics worked. The man that had done that to her? Jack never saw him. But he carried the memory of Angel's busted face with him until the next time he'd run into her. She'd looked a damn sight better and Jack had barely recognized her, but she'd recognized him, as the cop who'd held her hand while the paramedics cataloged her wounds.

It really pissed Jack off that he'd both had to fire his service pistol and that Angel had ended up dead. Pissed him off even more that one thing had very much to do with the other.

He looked over at the barstool next to him. As much as he liked Carter – and he'd go so far as to say he liked her a fair bit – he could do without the company. And he could do without Carter seeing the pity-party he was throwing himself. It was too early in their partnership for her to see how he dealt with pain. And he wasn't sure he wanted the woman in her to take on his pain the way he thought she might be inclined to. Thankfully, she seemed content to sit in silence after she ordered her drink.

He'd already ground out the words I don't want to talk about it once, at the scene, after he'd shot Rico the split-second too late to save Angel's life. Sam had looked at him crossways but had backed off. She hadn't left him alone, though, not for a single moment since he'd shot the sonuvabitch that had killed Angel. It made him feel both giddy with the idea that she cared and burdened with the awareness that she was seeing things about him that she had no business seeing.

He'd fired his weapon, there had been paperwork. He'd shot Rico, so there was going to be an investigation. But the guy hadn't died – more's the pity, he really did think – so Jack wasn't going to be put on leave. Thank god. The last thing he needed right now was to be alone in his own head. It wasn't so much that he'd sink into a funk, though it was a distinct possibility under the circumstances. It was that he didn't need time to think about the actualities of drawing and shooting his gun and what that meant in the grander scheme of his life.

Jack knew he'd come out of the investigation okay. He'd been defending a civilian informant and himself and his partner against a drug dealing pimp. He swore to god he saw Rico swinging that gun around to Sam the instant after he pulled the trigger on Angel. But even if he hadn't, it happened so fast that it could have been a timing issue. After all the SOB had killed the one hooker Jack had ever had a soft spot for. After she'd recognized him, they'd built a bit of a rapport, even when he'd had to arrest her a couple of times.

And then, when he'd made detective, he'd convinced her that being an informant would be a good thing. And she'd made a good one.

Angel had been a hard woman in a soft body. She talked like a hooker but when Jack had met her, she hadn't looked like one. It was what had made her such a spectacular informant. But the intervening years had been hard on her and she'd picked up Rico along the way and suddenly her intel wasn't quite so reliable. Or free.

See, she'd liked Jack - she'd found him attractive from the outset, had never been deterred by his wedding ring, had been thrilled to death to see it gone, but it had more to do with the way he always treated her with respect, like she was a person first and a prositute second. And that had always played in his favor. But Rico? Rico didn't like Jack. Which was fine. That was a two way street. The only reason Rico was still out on the streets was because he was more useful to other agencies there. Jack hated the way that worked. How it was that a scumbag that badly abused women like Angel could be let off scott-free because he might be more useful getting some drugs off the street, while he kept putting more drugs on the street and perpetuating other crimes, it made Jack's head spin with the farce of it all.

But he guessed he'd solved that at least temporarily. Because there was no getting out of murder charges when a cop witnessed the deed.

In the interim, Rico would be held and questioned. He'd be used to get other criminals off the streets too. It would be a sweep. It would be the first time he wasn't a waste of criminal justice time and money and for that, Jack was glad that the sonuvabitch hadn't died.

Jack glanced over at Sam next to him nursing a B&B. He wondered how she could drink that stuff. There were a lot of things about her he wondered but one of the things they didn't really do was talk about personal stuff. He figured that was his fault. He wasn't a personal stuff kind of guy. He got the impression that she'd open up to him if he gave her the green light.

She glanced over at him. Found him watching her. Looked at him a little longer and then turned back to her drink. Her face gave nothing away. She was so stoic sometimes. And sometimes an open book. He wished right now was one of those open book times. He could use a clue with her because he didn't have any other damn clues at the moment.

Jack downed the last swallow of his bourbon and jostled her with his elbow. "You wanna get out of here?"

She looked at him, quirked an eyebrow, looked back at her drink, picked it up, knocked it back and then swung herself down off her barstool. "Where're we going?"

"Figured we could walk these off."

"I've had one."

"I've had more than one." But she knew that.

"Okay."

He turned them in the opposite direction of his apartment. She didn't know where he lived, so it didn't matter, but it felt right to walk away from home. They walked in silence for a long time. Maybe fifteen blocks. Finally, Jack started to feel like he was maybe being more than she really wanted to deal with on a Friday night. "I can call you a cab."

"If I wanted a cab, I could call me a cab."

"I'm fine," he tried.

"I can tell," she said wryly. "We've been wandering aimlessly for over a mile. You drank six fingers of bourbon in a half an hour and you haven't eaten since breakfast. Oh, and you lost someone important to you tonight." She stopped walking and laid a hand on his arm.

It stopped him walking too and drew him around to face her. "She wasn't important to me."

"I don't believe you," she said gently.

"She was an informant, Carter, that's it."

"Who you knew for a long time. It's okay to care about her."

He huffed. "I didn't want to see her die tonight, but that's as far as it goes."

"I'm not accusing you of having had an inappropriate relationship with her, Jack," she said with a ghost of a smile around her mouth. "I'm just saying that you cared about her."

He grunted noncommittally. As it happened she was more than a little right about the bourbon and the fact that he hadn't eaten since breakfast though. And they weren't far from Millie's. "You wanna grab something to eat?"

She shrugged. "Sure."

They walked the eight blocks to Millie's diner in silence. He liked that she wasn't a chatterer. It made him feel at ease with her, to know that he wasn't going to be made to fill the silence with idle chit chat.

At the diner, he held the door open for her and she gave him the same soft smile she always did when he did that. Like he'd just done something really unexpected or sweet. All he'd done is hold the goddamn door open but she smiled at him like he'd done something good and it always made his stomach flop over. In the good way. It flopped over this time too, but this time it was full of bourbon and that was a bad thing.

He grimaced and her eyes faltered. He raised his fingers to her wrist and rubbed against her soft skin, just a little gesture of a touch he hoped would gloss over the face he'd inadvertently made at her. The worry in her eyes smoothed out. He felt better then.

They sat in a booth, like they usually did and he signaled for two cups of coffee, like he usually did – he didn't even have to ask her anymore if she wanted it. They had a routine going. They'd been partners for over a month. He hadn't figured out much, but he'd figured out coffee.

He checked his watch and then ordred a full breakfast in deference to the late hour. She ordered whole wheat toast and just shrugged when he raised an eyebrow at her. "What? When you order the cheesecake later, I might have some."

"Of your own," he reminded her.

"You don't share. I know."

They fell into silence again, but it was comfortable. When their coffees arrived, she passed him two creamers and a sugar packet from the little carrier that was tucked close to her corner of the table.

"Thanks," he said.

"Sure." She watched as he doctored his coffee and looked wistful as he took a sip of his slightly cooled cup while she had to wait a little longer on hers.

"Why don't you order ice water with your coffee and put the ice in the coffee?"

"And water down the coffee?"

"How much would a couple of ice cubes water down the coffee?"

"Enough." She said with a finality he knew he wasn't going to be able to argue with. Even if she was just six kinds of wrong.

He just shook his head at her.

In that moment, she reminded him of Kawalsky. In her ability to pull him out of his head for a moment and into something completely inane and innocuous, she was very much like his former partner. In that moment, he was grateful for her. Not enough to spill his guts, but enough to keep him sitting across the table from her and from being a complete asshole.

She didn't seem inclined to push him to talk, though, even with the change of venue. She didn't ask him a bunch of questions or pepper him with conversation. She simply sat across from him and sipped her coffee. When their food arrived she didn't seem all that interested in her toast but she watched him tuck into his food with satisfaction in her eyes that gave him a sense of having pleased her. He really liked that look in her eyes. It was dangerous how much he liked that look in her eyes. He found himself wondering in what other ways he could put it there.

He thought, perhaps, it should be unnerving the way she watched him, but it wasn't. He found it comforting to have her blue eyes, weighty as they were, on him. She didn't just watch him. She looked him over. She let her eyes trail over him from the top of his head to where he disappeared behind the table and all the real estate in between.

He saw the way her eyes lingered on his hands. He wondered what she thought of them now that she'd watched them pull the trigger on somebody. Did she think of them differently than she'd thought of them before? He wasn't sure how she'd thought of them before, but he'd liked to think she'd trusted his hands, as an extension of him, to keep her safe. She didn't appear to be looking at them in disgust. If anything, he might say the look on her face was speculation. And didn't that just make parts of him sit up and take notice?

When her eyes had been heavy on his face for a while, he decided he'd better make an attempt at conversation before she bore holes into his psyche that only passion could fill. "She was an only child of only children," Jack said stuffing a bite of eggs into his mouth.

He chewed and swallowed. "There was nobody to notify."

Sam nodded. "I noticed that you didn't call anyone."

"It's so fucking pointless. What did he think he was going to accomplish?"

Sam shook her head sadly. She looked like she was going to reach for him – and he wasn't sure he could handle a touch of pity – so he dropped his silverware and grabbed for the napkin in his lap. He wiped at his mouth and sat back against the booth.

"I'm not in the mood for cheesecake tonight. Do you really want it?"

She shook her head, but he couldn't tell if she was deferring to him or if she really didn't want the damn cheesecake.

"You could get some to go..."

"I'm fine," she said.

"You hardly touched your toast."

"It's after midnight. I'm not really that hungry."

"You said you wanted to grab something to eat."

"I agreed to grabbing food. I wanted you to eat."

He huffed. He'd been had. Wasn't the first time he'd been bamboozled by a woman. Wouldn't be the last. Probably not even the last by this woman. He had a feeling he'd let her do a lot of bamboozling.

"C'mon, let me put you in a cab."

"You should let me put you in a cab," she said.

"I don't live too far away."

"You drive to work every day," she said.

"So?"

"We can walk from the precinct to Millie's. You can walk from Millie's to your place?"

Jack shrugged. "Yeah."

Sam just shook her head and chuckled. "Okay. Put me in a cab."

They waited outside together, in the cool night air, for the cab to arrive. Sam had her hands shoved in her pockets and all he could think about were her long, delicate fingers, and how cold they must be. He kept thinking about offering to warm them up. To take her hands in his. To do that stupid thing where you put the other person's hands in your own jacket pockets, like the kids do. He thought about doing that with her. Standing there, waiting on the cab to arrive.

In the end, he just stared at the side of her head and watched the way her hair curled around her ear. And the way the tip of her nose turned pink in the cold air as she stood in the circle of yellow light thrown off by the street lamp.

When the cab pulled up he opened the door for her and she gave him that smile again and he felt his stomach do the flop but this time there was food in there with the bourbon so it didn't feel so bad and he didn't grimace at her. He smiled back. She climbed into the cab.

He leaned down. "See you tomorrow."

"Yeah. Try not to stay up all night."

"What makes you think I'd stay up all night?"

"Call it a hunch."

Damn good hunch. But because she'd called him on it, he'd try to get some sleep. "Okay."

"Night, Jack."

"Good night."

He closed her into the cab and tapped on the roof. He watched it drive all the way down the street until the taillights disappeared.


End file.
